Flight cancellations on Ryanair to last till March

The cancellations will impact on the travel plans of another 400,000 passengers. Are you booked on one of the affected flights?

There is set to be more disruption for Ryanair passengers over the coming months. The airline has announced a further set of cancellations, as it struggles to accommodate a change over in the holiday year for pilots.

Between November and next March it has said it will cancel an additional 18,000 flights and fly 25 fewer planes in an attempt to limit any further problems.

Suspended services

This will involve the complete suspension of 34 routes from the winter timetable, eight of which are services travelling either to or from UK airports, including from Stansted to both Glasgow and Edinburgh, Newcastle to Faro and Gatwick to Belfast.

The news comes on top of the cancellations of up to 50 flights a day that will run to the end of October, which were announced earlier this month.

Alternative flights or refunds

Any passengers whose flights have now been cancelled will be able to book onto an alternative flight or receive a full refund. In addition to any refund, they will be offered up to €40 (£35) for one way bookings and €80 for return tickets to go towards alternative flights.

The cancellations through to the end of October have been blamed on a problem with the planning of pilot holidays and the airline has denied it is suffering from a shortage of pilots. It has stated that it has already offered jobs to more than 650 new pilots, who will start work by next May, and that over 2,500 were on a waiting list.

All passengers affected by the initial batch of cancellations, up to the end of October, have already been advised by email.

Michael O'Leary, Ryanair chief executive, said: "From today, there will be no more rostering-related flight cancellations this winter or in summer 2018.

"Slower growth this winter will create lots of spare aircraft and crews, which will allow us to manage the exceptional volumes of annual leave we committed to delivering in the nine months to December 2017."